SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN ART GALLERIES
Lara van de Coterlet
11974419
Final thesis
22-06-2018
MSc Business Administration
Entrepreneurship & Management in the Creative Industries
Supervisor:
Mw. Dr. M. Kackovic
Statement of originality
This document is written by Student Lara van de Coterlet (11974419) who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Abstract
Art galleries have different reasons to use social media marketing activities. One of the reasons to have a website and a social media page as an art gallery is to attract new visitors & possible buyers. To attract those visitors and buyers an art gallery makes use of those online pages by means of being a representation of the art gallery itself. The latter is found to intertwine with a brands’ marketing strategy in a way that a brand is a representation for what a product, service and/or business stands for. Therefore an art gallery’s brand shapes the customers’ mind and is stated to “channel our patterns of consumption”. For the reason that a brand is defined by brand equity, how brand equity is influenced by an art gallery’s social media marketing activities can be of found of importance. Henceforth, this study looks at two types of social media marketing (SMM), earned SMM and owned SMM, and their respective influence on the brand equity of an art gallery. Brand equity consists of three dimensions; brand awareness, functional brand image and hedonic brand image, of which all three are studied. The context of this study is commercial art galleries active in the Dutch market. By means of an online survey data of 239 respondents were gathered, which were analysed with the statistical software STATA. Respondents were assigned to six different research treatments in which they all had to evaluate two posts shown of the art gallery (earned SMM) and a picture of the art gallery’s website (owned SMM). It is found that earned SMM that consisted of positive comments and no comments have a positive significant influence on brand equity of the art gallery. Owned SMM was found to have a positive significant effect on brand equity when no comments (earned SMM) were present. No significant results were found for negative comments (earned SMM), but generally negative comments indicate to have a negative effect on brand equity. To conclude, positive earned SMM (positive comments/no comments) and owned SMM (having a website) positively influence an art gallery’s brand equity. Although only some results were significantly supported, the implications for the art galleries should not go unmentioned.
TABLE OF CONTENT 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 9 2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA 9 2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 9 2.3 SMM IN ART GALLERIES 10 2.4 TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 11 3 BRAND EQUITY 12 4 METHODOLOGY 16 4.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 16 4.2 RESPONDENTS 18 DEMOGRAPHICS 19 4.3 MEASURES 20 PRE-TEST 20 DESIGN 21 EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENTS 22 MEASURES 24 5 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS 27 5.1 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS 27 5.2 DATA TRANSFORMATION 29 5.3 CORRELATIONS 32 5.4 HYPOTHESES TESTING 35 INDEPENDENT VARIABLES 35 DESCRIPTIVE VARIABLES 37 5.5 REGRESSION ANALYSIS 41 EARNED SMM ON BRAND EQUITY 42 OWNED SMM ON BRAND EQUITY 44 6. DISCUSSION 45 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH 47 PRACTICIAL IMPLICATIONS 48 CONCLUSION 49 7. REFERENCES 50 APPENDIX 55 APPENDIX A: RESEARCH TREATMENTS 55 APPENDIX B - SURVEY 67 APPENDIX C: CORRELATIONS 78 APPENDIX D: REGRESSION ANALYSES 80
1. Introduction
“Art imitates life, life imitates art - as social media becomes more ubiquitous than ever, we are beginning to see how the power of the virtual lens shapes the way we experience culture.”
By A. Kwun, CNN (2018)
Last year the social media users numbers hit 2,46 billion and the expected number for the upcoming year lies at 2,62 billion users around the globe (“Number of social media users”, 2017). Social media include online platforms (blogs, social networks, branded communities and social publishing sites) that give rise to the possibility of sharing and participating in a variety of activities (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). It was found by Perrin (2015) that 65% of adults were using social networking sites in 2015, which showed a tenfold increase from the past decade. This January the social media networking site Facebook hit 2.167 billion active users (“leading global social networks”, 2018). This number is higher than the population of China (1.41 billion) and the U.S. (0.32 billion) together. According to eMarketer (2017), a total of 2.46 billion individuals use social networks at least once a month, meaning one-third of the global population. The enornous reach by means of social media makes social media not only relevant, but makes it even more important to a brand’s marketing strategies (Yadav & Rahman, 2017; Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
A brand is a representation for what a product, person and/or company stands for, in which the brand gives opportunity for customers to distinguish between other brands (Caldwell & Coshall, 2002). Football players, movie stars, and even politicians market themselves through brands, just like Caldwell & Coshall (2002) mention that even the royal family can be rebranded. These examples show that “brands channel our patterns of consumption” (Caldwell & Coshall, 2002, p. 383) and thereby brands have become an
(Keller, 1993). Brand equity can be defined as the effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of a brand (Keller, 1993) and is both influenced by brand awareness (customer’s ability to recall or recognize a brand) and brand image (entails a customer’s link to a brand). Brand image can again be divided according to Bruhn, Schoenmueller & Schäfer (2012) into two dimensions: functional brand image (reliability, credibility & trustworthiness) and hedonic brand image (related to visual attributes).
Building brand equity by means of an increase in visibility through social media was found to be of help to art galleries (Davies, 2016). In previous research museums were already defined as brands (Fletcher & Lee, 2012), because of the reason that a visitor’s image is related to the brand and shapes the customers’ perspective on how they experience a brand (Fletcher & Lee, 2012). Now walking through a museum or even already before entering the museum, the customers’ perception can be shaped through the brand of the museum itself (Caldwell, 2000; Caldwell & Coshall, 2002; Camarero, Garrido & Vicente, 2010). Continuing this train of thought to art galleries, one can identify art galleries as brands as well, as they use social media marketing to market their art gallery and more specifically to brand their artists. An art gallery’s marketing strategy, to effectively position itself as a brand, has become synonymous with social media presence considering the potential of reaching new consumers. For instance, research has shown that 22,7% of U.S. consumers discover art through social media channels, while 15,9% state that they discover art through visiting art galleries (Study: U.S. Millennials Prefer Instagram to Museums, 2016). Next to this, it was found that 44,3% of millennials use social media channels like Instagram to discover art, which is interesting since these 41,9% of millennials also found buying art is a good investment.
Recent research has found an important impact of social media on marketing (Ashley & Tuten, 2015; Hausmann & Poellmann, 2013; Fletcher & Lee, 2012; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Yadav & Rahman, 2017). Social media is defined as a marketing tool for reaching,
interacting and communicating in a multi-way with a company’s audience and a tool to provide an effective relationship with its end-consumers (Hausmann & Poellmann, 2013; Fletcher & Lee, 2012; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Moreover, social media can help firms to communicate about their brand (Lovett & Staelin, 2016). Next to this, it was found that social media marketing positively influences brand equity of fashion brands (Kim & Ko, 2012) and that it is of great importance to museums to reach their audience by providing a multi-way communication between them and their (potential) visitors (Fletcher & Lee, 2012). To develop and maintain brands, media can be defined in the following three categories according to Lovett & Staelin (2016): paid media (offline advertising), earned media (word of mouth & online social media), and owned media (brand websites). Their study found that media exposure helps consumers to learn about the brand, whereas earned media and paid media were found to be crucial for developing and maintaining brands in the context of television viewing audiences and owned media help the customers to recall the show. Since this research looks at social media marketing and thereby at online and not offline marketing, only the types owned and earned media will be examined.
Continuing, this thesis looks at different social media marketing channels: photo sharing platforms (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, own website), social networks (e.g., Facebook) and video sharings (e.g., Facebook, own website).The social media marketing activities of art galleries will be categorized, in which earned media will be captured by posts on Instagram by an art gallery about their artists and their respective comments, and owned media will be captured by a part of the website of an art gallery in which the art gallery is introduced and its Facebook page. In this context art galleries are characterized as brands with the goal of maximizing sales commissions from investments in artists, where the owner(s) represent(s) the art gallery and sells the artists’ work (Ertug et al., 2016). This thesis looks at commercial
masters. The definition by Yadav & Rahman (2017) of social media marketing is applied in the context of art galleries; social media marketing is a process by which art galleries can create, communicate, and deliver online marketing offerings via social media platforms to build and maintain customer’s relationships that increases customer’s value by providing interaction, information sharing and word of mouth creation among customers surrounding art galleries. Research already analysed the influence of social media marketing in the context of arts organizations as theatre, museums and orchestras (Hausmann, 2012). It was found that social media marketing can reduce quality uncertainty for (potential) customers (Hausmann, 2012) and perceived quality is one of the components of brand equity of cultural organizations (Camarero et al., 2010). As stated by Davies (2016): “Galleries need to recognize that survival will depend on the social media habits, of existing and new customers, transforming the way art is experienced.”
Concluding, although the importance of social media marketing is recognized in literature, little research has been done surrounding social media marketing activities in the context of art galleries. This thesis enriches the literature by taking a closer look at the different types of social media marketing (earned and owned) and to look at their respective effects on brand awareness, functional brand image and hedonic brand image, which are constitutional parts of brand equity. Moreover, considering the present literature gap, this thesis will attempt to answer the following question: To what extent are earned and owned
social media marketing related to brand equity of an art gallery?
The sub-research questions stated below will be investigated as well.
RQ2: To what extent are earned and owned social media marketing related to the brand awareness of an art gallery?
RQ3: To what extent are earned and owned social media marketing related to the functional brand image of an art gallery?
RQ4: To what extent are earned and owned social media marketing related to the hedonic brand image of an art gallery?
This thesis will be structured as follows. Firstly, with a comprehensive literature review a detailed explanation is given surrounding the different concepts used for this research, starting with literature surrounding social media marketing, which will be followed by the different types of social media marketing and lastly the components of brand equity will be explained. Theories (Fletcher & Lee, 2012; Hausmann, 2012; Hausmann & Poellmann, 2013) surrounding social media in the creative industries highlight the importance of social media in marketing practices. Furthermore, the relation between social media marketing and brand equity will be introduced. Next to this, the definitions used for this research will be stated and as well as the hypotheses following from the present literature. These hypotheses will be tested through gathering data from a survey among students. Hereafter, the acquired data will be analysed resulting in a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications.
2. Literature review
2.1 Social media
Before the concept social media marketing will be defined, the definition of social media will be stated. Starting with the definition of Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p. 61): “social media is a group of Internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content”. Social media include online platforms (blogs, social networks, branded communities and social publishing sites) that give possibility to sharing and participating in a variety of activities (Ashley & Tuten, 2015).
The majority of studies conclude that social media is a tool that enables, supports and when used effectively can strengthen the communication and relationship with a firm’s end-consumers through online social interaction (Hausmann & Poellmann, 2013; Fletcher & Lee, 2012; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Since social media can also conflate communication and cannot always be controlled by the company, the effect of social media can also negatively effect the relationship between the brand and customer (Bruhn, Schoenmueller & Schäfer, 2012).
2.2 Social media marketing
As mentioned earlier, social media can be seen as a marketing tool for firms to communicate with customers (Yadav, 2017, Yadav & Rahman, 2017). The enormous numbers of social media users provide a customer base for firms that give possibility to interact with a large audience at once (Ashley & Tuten, 2015; Yadav, 2017; Yadav & Rahman, 2017), which makes social media an interesting marketing tool for businesses to discover (Ashley & Tuten,
Different opinions exist about the definition regarding social media marketing (SMM henceforth) (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Chang et al., 2015; Chi, 2011; Choi et al., 2016; Felix et al., 2017; Pham & Gammoh, 2015; Taubenheim et al., 2008), which will be explained further. In view of some researchers SMM is a way to communicate and interact with existing and future customers and by this creating and maintaining customer relationships (Chan & Guillet, 2011; Chang et al., 2015; Chi, 2011; Choi et al., 2016; Taubenheim et al., 2008). Whereas other researchers put the emphasis of SMM more on the process of building and growing stakeholders’ value through using social media platforms for marketing purposes by facilitating interaction, information sharing, and word of mouth creation (Felix et al., 2017; Pham & Gammoh, 2015; Yadav & Rahman, 2017).
There are different social media platforms available for companies to use as a marketing tool. The scope of social media channels for this thesis is limited to; photo sharing sites (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, own website), social networks (e.g., Facebook) and video sharings (e.g., Facebook, own website).
2.3 SMM in art galleries
There is evidence in the literature that social media in the performing arts organizations (theatre) has a big impact on its marketing through promotion, communication and stimulation of worth of mouth, and lastly it provides the arts organizations with market research, innovation management and reputation management (Hausmann & Poellmann, 2013). Similarly, Fletcher & Lee (2012) acknowledged the importance of social media for museums, by stating that through social media museums can reach their audiences by providing a multi-way communication between them and their (potential) visitors. This is important for the reason that by having this reach through social media one can also target
(museums, theatres & orchestras) can play an important role in arts marketing through informing potential visitors through social media about their offerings. Next to this, for the reason that other visitors can leave comments about their experience and thoughts about the art institutions, it can reduce uncertainty with (potential) visitors (again, not researched in art galleries) (Hausmann, 2012).
Concluding, although the importance of social media marketing in general is recognized, little research has been done surrounding SMM specifically in art galleries. In order to clarify SMM in art galleries, the following sections will provide an explanation of the different SMM types that will be used in this thesis.
2.4 Types of social media marketing
In order to explore and gain more knowledge about the relation between SMM and its effect on an art gallery’s brand equity, SMM activities will be categorized by two of the three types of media used in previous research. Lovett and Staelin (2016) looked at the following three distinct types of media and their role in building tv shows as a brand; earned media, like word-of-mouth, social media buzz or publicity, owned media, like own brands’ websites and
paid media, like offline advertising. What they found is, that all three media types play a role
in informing customers about how well the tv-show matches their taste. Owned media helps the customers to recall the show and earned & paid media increase future enjoyment of the brand. Lastly, earned media were found to be overall more impactful than owned & paid media (Lovett & Staelin, 2016). Another research acknowledged that earned media in the form of word-of-mouth communications shared via social channels increase the SMM of brands and thereby represent a valuable outcome for brands (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). These types can categorize SMM used by art galleries as follows; the first type earned SMM entails
generated word-of-mouth on social media channels, like followers, comments and likes. The second type owned SMM contains the art galleries’ own website.
In order to deepen the knowledge surrounding the relation between SMM and brand equity, the next chapter covers in detail theories surrounding the dimensions of brand equity and states the expected effect of earned and owned SMM on the three dimensions of brand equity; brand awareness, functional and hedonic brand image.
3 Brand equity
Brands behold meanings over the social lives and the psychological dimensions of consumers (Caldwell & Coshall, 2002). They guide us in our consumption and hence have become pillars of emotional and symbolic meaning (Caldwell & Coshall, 2002). Brands distinguish themselves visually through their websites, names and marketing in order to attract attention (Schroeder, 2009). Previous research has already defined museums as brands in which the brands shape the customers’ perspective of the museums (Caldwell, 2000; Caldwell & Coshall, 2002). From this perspective art galleries can be seen as brands as well. Firstly, since they use the same visual tools, like websites, names and their artists, to market themselves. Secondly, one can say that art galleries brand their artists by providing a stamp of quality to them by representing them. This brings us to the concept of brand equity, which can be defined as a customer’s subjective evaluation of a brand, based on the brand knowledge that a customer perceives through its’ SMM from social media channels, as well as the customer response to the brand-based SMM of other customers on social media channels (Bruhn et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2008; Keller, 1993).
SMM activities of luxury fashion brands were found to have a positive effect on brand equity (Kim & Ko, 2012). Moreover, research focussed on the difference between traditional
(tourism, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals) and their respective effects on brand equity (Bruhn et al., 2012). This resulted in the conclusion that both have a significant effect on brand equity, in which they found that traditional media (paid media) has a stronger effect on brand awareness, while social media marketing was found to have a stronger impact on brand image (Bruhn et al., 2012).
Moreover, Bruhn et al. (2012) concluded that from their results it can be stated that SMM has a strong impact on brand image and thereby SMM can be seen as an important tool for their marketing in order to increase brand equity. As reported by Keller (1993), the consumer mindset is divided by brand image and brand awareness. Brand image entails a customer’s link to a brand (Keller, 1993). Brand awareness refers to the customer’s ability to recall or recognize a brand, which indicates the existence of a brand in a customer’s mind (Rossiter & Percy, 1992; Bruhn et al., 2012) used these two dimensions to evaluate the brand equity from a customer’s mindset. They further differentiated the concept brand image into
functional brand image (reliability, credibility & trustworthiness) and hedonic brand image
(related to visual attributes) (Bruhn et al., 2012). In figure 1 the discussed elements and concepts used in this thesis are visually represented in the conceptual model.
Figure 1: Conceptual model
Starting with the first type of SMM, the owner of the art gallery or the person in charge for the SMM writes the text or message for owned SMM. For reason that owned SMM is solely
every art gallery’s owned SMM is favourable towards its own art gallery. Henceforth, a marketer aims to present a brand positively through its SMM and tries to transfer positive brand-based content towards the (potential) customer (Bruhn et al., 2012). Next to this, it was found that owned SMM positively affects a first time visitors’ likelihood of purchasing from that particular brand (Xie & Lee, 2015) and thereby it can be assumed that owned SMM that is positively evaluated also positively influences brand equity.
H1: Owned SMM that is generated by the website from the art gallery positively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity
Continuing to the effect of earned SMM on brand equity, it cannot be assumed that these earned SMM are always favourable towards the art gallery. Since earned SMM encompasses generated word-of-mouth by customers on social media channels, like followers, comments and likes, it is not within the art gallery’s control to manage what is written on these online social media channels. Hence, this earned SMM can be either positive or negative and thereby can have a different outcome on brand equity. It was found that negative comments decrease brand equity (Bambauer-Sachse & Mangold, 2011). Which makes us question the statement of “all publicity is good publicity” (Sorensen & Rasmussen, 2004). Berger et al. (2010) found that this holds only true for one of the three dimensions of brand equity, namely that negative comments make people more aware about the brand. Therefore negative comments can increase brand awareness, but do not increase the total of brand equity. The other two dimensions of brand equity, functional and hedonic brand image are respectively about the trustworthiness/credibility/reliability and desirability/attractiveness of the brand. Since perceived quality is one of the components of brand equity in cultural organizations (Camarero et al., 2010) and it was found that SMM mostly reduces quality uncertainty for
(potential) customers (Hausmann, 2012), a negative comment will be expected not to reduce that quality uncertainty and thereby negatively affect the functional and hedonic brand image. Henceforth, the influence of negative earned SMM is expected to negatively influence the total brand equity, in which negative earned SMM influences brand awareness positively and functional & hedonic brand image negatively. From this the following hypotheses are drawn:
H2a: Earned SMM that is generated by positive comments from visitors to an art gallery’s Instagram page, positively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity.
H2b: Earned SMM that is generated by negative comments from visitors to an art gallery’s Instagram page, negatively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity.
4 Methodology
In this section the methodology of this research is discussed. The first part describes the research design, which will be followed by an explanation of its the respondents, its measures and its experimental treatments. Lastly, different scales that are used in the survey to test the effects of owned and earned SMM on brand equity will be explained.
4.1 Research design
Owned SMM and earned SMM are the independent variables and brand equity is the
dependent variable, wherein brand awareness, functional and hedonic brand image are sub-dimensions of brand equity. Table 1 contains a detailed explanation of the two types of SMM used in this thesis. Different messages used by the art gallery will be divided by the types of SMM (owned and earned) and their respective messages will be tested by their effect on brand equity.
Table 1. Types of SMM SMM
Type
Definition Examples
Earned Social media marketing activity that is not directly generated by the art gallery, but by other social media users
• Likes (e.g., Facebook & Instagram) (Likes can be bought as well, for this research this will be excluded)
• Comments: (e.g., Facebook & Instagram) • Followers (e.g., Facebook & Instagram)
(followers can be bought as well, for this research this will be excluded)
• Online word of mouth referrals (e.g., invitations to like the art gallery’s page)
Owned Social media marketing activity that is generated by the art gallery, in which the brand is also in control of this activity
• Art gallery’s website
• Art gallery’s owned pages (e.g., Facebook page & Instagram page)
For the reason that there are time-constraints for this study a closer look is taken at one art gallery. In order to find one specific art gallery for this thesis, it is important to look at the different existing types of art galleries. Four different types of art galleries are recognized;
commercial art gallery; for-profit business that derives their profit from selling art of artists
that the gallery represents, co-op art gallery; group of artists split the costs and run the art gallery themselves, rental art gallery; artists can rent a space of the art gallery and most of the time they run that space themselves and vanity art gallery; charge artists a fee to show show their work and makes more money on charging the artists than on selling artworks (“Art scene today”; “Picture perfect: 4 types of art galleries”, 2017). This thesis looks at commercial art galleries. The Nederlandse Galerie Associatie was used to find those commercial art galleries in the Netherlands and select art galleries that comply with the above-mentioned requirement. After which, one art gallery was chosen on the basis of that they use Facebook, Instagram and their website actively and in which the posts used are also used on all three SMM channels; Facebook, Instagram and their website. After careful consideration and consulting all commercial art galleries in the Nederlandse Galerie Associatie the commercial art gallery de
Twee Pauwen was found to comply with all requirements. After having chosen this art
gallery, the Facebook page, Instagram page and website were used to select three artists who are represented by the art gallery and who are represented with the same artwork on all three SMM channels. With a pre-test one artist and artwork were chosen to avoid any data differences by means of differences in artistic skill (pre-test will be explained later). This artist’s painting is painted in a realistic style. To avoid any liking bias towards the painting style, another artist was chosen on the basis of painting in an abstract style. Next to this, the second painting chosen contains the same colours used as in the other painting. These two paintings will be evaluated by all groups of respondents, but both paintings will be shown in different contexts dependent on their research condition (owned SMM: having a website
versus not having a website) & (earned SMM: positive versus negative comments), to see whether the same effects hold on all the contexts. Appendix A shows the pictures of the posts as well as the different contexts that are used for the survey. In order to assess the above-stated hypotheses an online-survey was conducted that later is used to analyse the data via STATA. The online survey was distributed using the platform Qualtrics.
4.2 Respondents
To conduct this study, 239 students that currently follow an MBO (middle-level applied education), HBO bachelor (bachelor in higher professional education), HBO master (master in higher professional education), WO bachelor (scientific education), WO master or PHD volunteered in the online survey. 205studentsfinished the survey (86%). Other requirements that hold for the respondents were that they must be experienced in using the online social media channels that are used for this research. The respondents were contacted through either Facebook or Instagram. Using social media platforms to conduct surveys was found to have problems regarding to sampling (Stanton, 1998; Wright, 2005), since there is the possibility of knowing little about the respondents using the social media platforms. In order to avoid this problem, targeted known students that met the criteria were asked to fill in the questionnaire. Using social media platforms to conduct surveys was found by different researches to be cost effective compared to other methods (Andrews et al., 2003; Wright, 2005). Due to the fact that the known students were targeted, the method used can be explained as self-selection sampling. This method is chosen for the reason that the short time frame of gathering 200+ respondents that are currenlty following a study, generates time constraints and conducting the survey online is time effective (Wright, 2005). Next to this, on account of the need that students are experienced in using the social media platforms, contacting students through
students were approached on the social media platforms in order to meet 200+ respondents. Furthermore, the respondents were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental treatments. These experimental treatments are further explained later.
Demographics
Self-selection sampling was used for data collection, which is known to have a sampling problem as a result of not being a good reflection of a whole population (Stanton, 1998; Wright, 2005). Hence, this has to be taken into acount when generalizing the data. However, in order to comply with the central limit theorem a minimum of 32 respondents should be assigned to each of the experimental treatments (Field, 2009). Of all respondents 50,4% are female, 49,1% are male and 1 person indicated to prefer not to respond. With respect to age, most respondents (23,7%) indicated to be 23. 85,8% indicated to have the age of 21-27, from this it can be argued that the sample in general lies between 20-30. Other demographics include marital status, education, financing of education and living situation. 92,2% indicated to be single (not married) and 6,0% indicated to be married. Continuing, 117 respondents indicated that they follow a WO master, which makes this the biggest group in education. The second highest group (N=39) is following a WO bachelor. 134 students pointed out to have financed their education by parents/relatives gift, respectively the next highest indicated choices are: federal loan (studiefinanciering) with 122 and self-financed with 83. Of all respondents 41,1% pointed out to live with a roommate/roommates. Furthermore, the least amount of respondents lives with relatives (0,9%), other (1,3%), alone (15,1%), parents (19,8%) and partner (21,6%). To conclude, the sample is not generalizable for a general population by reason of that some demographic statistics have a higher average compared to an average population. However, since the focus of this thesis’ sample is students and the high number of students following a WO bachelor or WO master, the sample cannot be found
representative to a general population, but can be found representative to students following either a WO bachelor or WO master.
4.3 Measures
Pre-test
A pre-test was conducted in order to choose an artwork to be used for the present study. Three different artists represented by art gallery de Twee Pauwen were selected on the basis of similarity in painting style and if all their artworks were used on all three social media platforms. After which three artworks by each of the three artists chosen were selected and used for this pre-test to compare familiarity of the images. The brand familiarity scale used by Kent & Allen (1994) with Cronbach’s α of 0,85 was used and adopted to this research. Each respondent was asked to answer the following question: “regarding the painting showed, are you: …” (unfamiliar/familiar; in 7-point numeric format). Continuing, respondents were asked to fill in the following question to measure previous exposure of the painting by the art gallery: “have you ever seen a post by the art gallery de Twee Pauwen showing this painting before?” (definitely no/definitely yes; in 5-point semantic differential form). 31 participants responded. The painting that scored lowest on the brand familiarity scale is used in the survey to avoid a familiarity bias. Between the three artists, artist Juanne Xue and her work (see appendix A) scores an average of 1,65 (1-7 scale), whereas for the other two artists score 3,83 and 4,34 on the brand familiarity scale and previous exposure to posts is an average of 1,14 (1-5 scale), and respectively 1,19 and 1,23 for the other two artists. Thereby artist Juanne Xue and all three of her paintings have the desired properties of low brand familiarity and have a low level of previous exposure. The painting of her that scored the lowest on brand familiarity and previous exposure (respectively 1,23 and 1) is used for the survey.
Design
Participants were randomly assigned to one of 6 experimental conditions about owned and earned SMM of a 3 (positive versus negative versus no comments (control)) x 2 (dedicated website versus no website) between-subjects design. As said earlier, it was asked to all respondents to evaluate two paintings, in which the paintings were accompanied with different contexts depending on the research treatments. The following contexts were used for the experimental design: A. (positive comments + dedicated website), B. (negative comments + dedicated website), C. (no comments + dedicated website), D. (positive comments + no website), E. (negative comments + no website) and F. (no comments + no website). A detailed explanation of the expiremental treatments is given later.
The first part of the survey consisted of the following: in the survey the respondents were asked about their demographics including: gender (nominal variable), age and education. After this some questions regarding the financing of their education, their knowledge in art, their likability of paintings, their likability of figurative art, their likability of abstract art were asked. Next to this, it was also asked if their parents and themselves have ever bought a painting and if they would consider buying a painting in the future and respectively where they would buy it. Lastly, they were asked if they follow an art gallery on Facebook and/or Instagram and if yes, if they could recall the names of these art galleries. After this, participants were each assigned to one of the six experimental treatments.
The first question of the second part of the survey asked if they know art gallery de
Twee Pauwen. After which each participant was asked to carefully look at the pictures shown
of the website, Facebook page and Instagram page and answer the next questions based on these pictures. After the pictures and the first post on the Instagram page with the first artwork (figurative painting) were shown, it was asked if to what extent they liked the painting showed in the post and if they could buy the painting, what the maximum price in euros
would be. After answering these questions, another picture was shown of a post on the art gallery’s Instagram page, which shows the abstract painting. The same questions regarding likability and willingness to pay were asked. After having answered these questions several questions were asked surrounding the dependent and independent variables.
Experimental treatments
As mentioned earlier, there were 6 different research treatments present, for which in each the 2 independent variables are changed in those groups. Those two independent variables are
owned SMM and earned SMM and will be explained further.
Owned SMM (website): the following two different contexts were chosen. 1. Dedicated website, a screenshot of the website of art gallery de Twee Pauwen was taken and
the http address, name of the art gallery, picture of the art gallery’s storefront, physical address, email address and the introduction text of the art gallery were shown. Not taking out the picture of the art gallery’s storefront,the addresses, as well as the introduction text of the art gallery is for the reason that these show the dedication of the art gallery on their website and thereby are important measures for owned SMM. The Control for dedicated website is the following; the same screenshot is shown, but the picture of the art gallery’s storefront, the addresses, as well as the introduction text of the art gallery are not shown. 2. No dedicated
website, screenshot of the website galleries.nl was taken (shows that art gallery de Twee Pauwen exists, but does not have a website) and the http address, name of the art gallery,
physical address and email address was shown. From this a screenshot of the introduction text of the art gallery, the picture of the art gallery’s storefront and the art gallery’s website were taken out. The Control for no dedicated website is the following; the same picture is shown, but only the art gallery’s name and the http address are shown.
Earned SMM (comments): earned SMM was measured by the difference in comments,
in which comments can be either positive or negative. As said earlier, two Instagram posts (1. with an figurative painting & 2. with an abstract painting) are used for all six contexts; the comments on these posts were manipulated in such a way that the only thing consistently different between the groups is the change between the Treatment (1. positive or 2. negative) and Control (3. no comments). Resulting that any differences in the data can be drawn from these treatments, establishing causality (Kohavi et al., 2009). The Instagram page of art gallery de Twee Pauwen was shown, in which the number of followers, posts and likes were not shown to avoid any influence of these factors on the results and to solely focus on the effects of comments posted by other visitors. A small introduction of the painting by the art gallery was included to give the post a realistic look, which consists of the following: “the technique and use of colours allow the artist to make paintings which are almost as light as real daylight”. The artist’s name was not included in the post to avoid any familiarity bias based on the name. Continuing, the positive comments consist of “this painting was evaluated by an art critic in the newspapers yesterday that it was a really creative piece” and “I agree with you” (reply on the previous comment), whereas the negative comments consist of the same comments with only one difference: “this painting was evaluated by an art critic in the newspapers yesterday that it was not a real creative piece” and “I agree with you” (reply on the previous comment). The Control exists of the same posts, but without any comments. Both posts 1. with the figurative painting and 2. with the abstract painting have exactly the same comments and description of the painting in order to avoid any bias in the results when comparing the data of both paintings. Resulting in that each treatment group is shown two posts with the only difference is the painting itself.
Resulting from this, the following six experimental treatments are drawn (table 2) and are visually represented in appendix A.
Table 2. Overview experimental treatments
Group Groups Explanation of pictures shown
A Positive comments (Earned SMM) + dedicated website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with positive comments
• Owned SMM: Screenshot art gallery’s website with the http address, name of the art gallery, picture of the art gallery’s storefront, physical address, email address and the introduction text of the art gallery
B Negative comments (Earned SMM) + dedicated website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with negative comments
• Owned SMM: Screenshot art gallery’s website with the http address, name of the art gallery, picture of the art gallery’s storefront, physical address, email address and the introduction text of the art gallery
C No comments (Earned SMM) + dedicated website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with no comments • Owned SMM: Screenshot art gallery’s website
with the http address, name of the art gallery D Positive comments (Earned
SMM) + no website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with positive comments
• Owned SMM: Screenshot of galleries.nl with the http address, name of the art gallery, physical address, email address
E Negative comments (Earned SMM) + no website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with negative comments
• Owned SMM: Screenshot of galleries.nl with the http address, name of the art gallery, physical address, email address
F No comments (Earned SMM) + no website (Owned SMM)
• Earned SMM: Instagram post with negative comments
• Owned SMM: Screenshot of galleries.nl with the http address, name of the art gallery
Measures
In order to investigate the existing research questions, validated scales by Bruhn et al. (2012) and Yoo et al. (2000) were used on a 5-point scale (completely disagree – completely agree). Continuing, the established scale in the literature by Bruhn et al. (2012) was used and adapted
to the context of this study in order to measure brand equity; owned SMM, earned SMM, functional and hedonic brand image.
Independent: owned SMM was assessed using the 2 items scale with Cronbach’s α of
0,97 of Bruhn et al. (2012). Participants were asked two questions, namely if they felt satisfied and if they were happy with the communication on the website, Facebook and Instagram expressed by this art gallery. Earned SMM was assessed using the 3 items scale with Cronbach’s α of 0,97 of Bruhn et al. (2012). To assess earned SMM, participants were asked if they felt satisfied and were happy with the comments posted by visitors and if they found the comments posted by visitors informative.
Dependent: continuing, the first sub-dimension of brand equity brand awareness was
measured using 3 items of Yoo et al. (2000), for which participants were asked if they easily memorized & recognized this art gallery and if they had a clear picture of this art gallery.
Functional brand image was assessed using the 3 items scale with Cronbach’s α of 0,98 of
Bruhn et al. (2012), for which participants were asked if they found this art gallery to be reliable & credible and if they trusted the art gallery. Hedonic brand image was assessed using a 4 items scale with Cronbach’s α of 0,95 of Bruhn et al. (2012), for which participants were asked if they found the art gallery to be attractive & recommendable and if they found the art gallery to project a strong personality & character. As indicated by Keller (1993) brand equity consists of the above-stated three sub-dimensions. Therefore, these three variables in total will indicate the dependent variable brand equity.
Control: the following variables constitute the control variables: gender
(male/female/prefer not to respond), age (dropdown list of age/prefer not to respond), marital
status (single (not married), widowed, divorced, seperated) and level of education (MBO,
HBO bachelor, HBO master, WO bachelor, WO master). Furthermore, the question was asked how they financed their education (federal loan (studiefinanciering), scholarship,
parent/relatives gift, self-financed, other loan, other). Next to this, it was asked if their parents had ever bought art and when yes, where they bought art (at an art auction, art gallery, from the artist directly, limited edition print from an art auction, art gallery or artist directly, print in a shop like Ikea, Leenbakker, Blokker (not an original painting, but a copy), I do not know where they bought the painting). The same question was asked if they themselves ever bought a painting and if they would consider buying art in the future. Adding to this, questions related to the interest in paintings, figurative paintings and abstract paintings were asked. After which it was asked to rate their self-reported level of knowledge about art. Furthermore, it was asked if they follow an art gallery on either Facebook or Instagram and if answered yes, they were asked to name the top 3 art galleries they follow. Lastly, the questions were asked to what extent they liked the painting showed in the post and if they could buy the painting, what the maximum price in euros would be if they bought the painting. These two questions were asked for both the paintings. Appendix B covers the questionnaire and thereby the items and their respective questions adapted to the context of art galleries.
5 Statistical analysis
This chapter covers the data analysis that was made with the statistical software STATA. To begin with, descriptive statistics give insights on the familiarity of the art gallery used, on the likability of the paintings used and on the demographics of the respondents. Following to this, an explanation of the data transformation is provided, after which the most important correlations are highlighted and the hypotheses are tested. Lastly, multiple regression analyses are done to see if those correlations hold true when controlling for all the investigated regressors and to what extent the different variables are related.
5.1 Descriptive statistics
239 participants started the questionnaire and 205 participants completed the survey. Before starting the data analysis, those 34 that did not finish the survey were excluded from the sample. Resulting from this, the number of participants per research condition differs. Since for this research a look is taken at how first time visitors experience brand equity, it is required that people do not already know the art gallery chosen. When people do state that they know the art gallery de Twee Pauwen, it could interfere with the results. This could be due to the fact that people might already have an opinion about the art gallery and therefore might already have established some brand equity. From the questionnaire it is found that 198 participants stated that they did not know the art gallery de Twee Pauwen and only 7 participants indicated that they knew the art gallery. This indicates that for 96,6 % of the participants the conditions to not know the art gallery hold. Next to this, the participants that stated to know the art gallery are evenly distributed over the different groups.
Table 3. Descriptive statistics: likability of painting 1 N Dislike a great deal Dislike somewhat Neither like nor dislike Like somewhat Like a great deal Group A 31 2 1 6 15 7 Group B 35 1 6 3 15 10 Group C 31 2 4 10 11 4 Group D 39 1 4 7 20 7 Group E 35 2 8 4 17 4 Group F 34 0 3 10 18 3 Total in % 3,90 12,69 19,51 46,83 17,07 Table 4. Descriptive statistics: maximum indicated payment (in Euro) for painting 1
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Group A 31 0 3.000 499,74 729,07 Group B 35 0 10.000 829,57 1773,85 Group C 31 0 10.000 1047,26 2528,05 Group D 39 0 1.500 257,82 314,23 Group E 35 0 10.000 461,09 1677,01 Group F 34 0 3.000 352,50 549,14
Table 5. Descriptive statistics: likability of painting 2
N Dislike a great deal Dislike somewhat Neither like nor dislike Like somewhat Like a great deal Group A 31 7 10 3 7 4 Group B 35 6 11 7 8 3 Group C 31 6 7 9 8 1 Group D 39 4 12 8 11 4 Group E 35 6 13 8 7 1 Group F 34 6 9 7 8 4 Total in % 17,07 30,24 20,49 23,90 8,29
Table 6. Descriptive statistics: maximum indicated payment (in Euro) for painting 2
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
Group A 31 0 3.000 287,84 556,02
Group B 35 0 5.000 540,43 969,97
Group C 31 0 10.000 655,97 1954,43
Group D 39 0 1.500 163,21 334.63
Table 3,4,5 & 6 show the participants assigned to each research condition and their respective likability of both painting 1 & 2 (painting 1 is painted in a figurative style and painting 2 in an abstract style) and respectively the maximum amount they would pay for painting 1 & 2. As seen from the results it can be stated that the overall likability of painting 1 is higher, because the biggest number of participants (47%) falls in the category of like somewhat, whereas for painting 2 the biggest group (30%) falls in the category of dislike somewhat. Next to this, the lowest group (4%) states to dislike a great deal when shown the picture of painting 1, whereas for painting 2 the lowest group (8%) states to like a great deal. From this it can be stated that painting 1 scores overall higher on likability than painting 2 and therefore the figurative style of painting is overall more liked than the abstract style.
Continuing to the results of what the participants would pay for both paintings, the first thing to notice is that the mean is higher for painting 1 than for painting 2 in all the groups. Resulting from this, one can say that participants’ willingness to pay for the figurative painting is greater than for the abstract painting. Next to this, group C has the highest mean for both painting 1 (€1047,26) and painting 2 (€655,97). In contrast, group F for painting 1 (€257,82) and group E for painting 2 (€116,63) have the lowest mean.
5.2 Data transformation
Factor analyses are used in this thesis for the purpose of data reduction in order to get a smaller set of variables from a large set of covariates and to create indexes with variables that measure similar things (Costello & Osborne, 2005). In this case, variables that measure similar things are needed in order to merge the different items together. An example of the merging of these variables is that brand awareness is measured by asking three different questions, those three different questions represented three different variables. Those three
variables were merged into one variable by using a factor analysis to measure the total brand
awareness. Before the factor analysis there were in total 15 variables, including dependent
and independent variables (excluding the control variables). For the reason that taking into account each separate item would not give a clear overview of the results, since there are six different research treatments for each of those variables, those 15 variables were transformed into 5 variables; earned SMM, owned SMM, brand awareness, functional & hedonic brand
image. Next to this, in order to measure brand equity a double-factor analysis was done
merging the variables brand awareness, functional & hedonic brand image into one variable brand equity.
Table 7 Shapiro-Wilk test
Nr. W V z Prob>z
Brand equity group A 31 0.95738 1.388 0.680 0.24831 Brand equity group B 35 0.95972 1.438 0.758 0.22424 Brand equity group C 31 0.98371 0.531 -1.312 0.90532 Brand equity group D 39 0.97250 1.066 0.135 0.44650 Brand equity group E 35 0.97964 0.727 -0.666 0.74742 Brand equity group F 34 0.96883 1.088 0.177 0.42991
The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to see if normality of the data could be assumed for all research treatments. Table 7 shows the Shapiro-Wilk test and its values. The last column corresponds to the p-value associated to the test on the null hypotheses of normality. In all the 6 cases the null hypotheses of normality are not rejected leading to the statistical evidence of normally distributed brand equity data. Anecdotal evidence of the normality of the distribution of the brand equity data can be provided by a histogram of the overall distribution of brand equity and the kernel density plots of brand equity by the six groups. The following two figures show the histogram and the kernel density plot. In these two figures it can be seen as well that the data is normally distributed. Next to this, detection of outliers has been tested which resulted in figure 4. The outlier in group C represents a person that indicated all
answers with strongly agree to the questions regarding owned SMM, earned SMM, brand awareness, functional brand image and hedonic brand image.
Figure 2 Histogram overall distribution brand equity Figure 3 Kernel Density plot brand equity
Continuing about the normality of the data, Field (2009) states in his book that values surrounding zero for skewness are normally distributed. For kurtosis values closer to 3 indicate normal distribution. From table 8 it can be seen that for all groups the skewness is around 0 and kurtosis close to 3, therefore the normality of the data of all six groups can be assumed.
Table 8. Skewness & Kurtosis
Nr. Mean Skewness Kurtosis Brand equity Group A 31 7.91e-09 0.2881081 2.121378 Brand equity Group B 35 -8.00e-09 0.0675241 2.214636 Brand equity Group C 31 -4.81e-09 -0.2935878 2.905657 Brand equity Group D 39 -5.66e-09 -0.075443 2.017399 Brand equity Group E 35 -2.13e-09 0.0771349 2.147508 Brand equity Group F 34 -2.41e-09 0.3114058 2.283525
5.3 Correlations
This part of the statistical analysis investigates the most important correlations found between the different variables. For the reason that six different groups are present and all are in need of different correlation tables, the most important correlations will be presented per group. The respective correlation tables can be found in the Appendix C.
Group A positive comments + dedicated website
Likability of realistic paintings is positively correlated with owned SMM (r=0.7321). Next to this, owned SMM and earned SMM are positively correlated with brand equity (respectively, r=0.6196 p<0.01, r=0.6629 p<0.01), which means that when you see that the art gallery has its own website and has its own social media pages on which other visitors comment, this positively correlates with brand equity. Continuing, knowledge about paintings is positively correlated with brand equity (r=0.5672 p<0.01), which implies that when one has more knowledge about paintings a higher brand equity is more likely. Lastly, when scored high on likability of the realistic painting showed in the post a positive correlation was found with brand equity (r=0.4770 p<0.01). Meaning that when one likes the realistic painting shown on
Group B negative comments + dedicated website
In group B earned SMM and owned SMM are found to be not correlated with brand equity. Meaning that having a dedicated website and having social media pages on which other users leave negative comments are not correlated with brand equity. What is found to be correlated with brand equity is when somebody follows other art galleries on social media (r=0.4319 p<0.01). Next to this, when scored high on the likability of the realistic painting shown in the post a positive correlation is found with brand equity (r=0.5071 p<0.01).
Group C no comments + dedicated website (without picture of the art gallery and text info
of the art gallery)
For group C a correlation is found for both earned SMM and owned SMM (respectively; r=0.7462 p<0.01, r=0.7407 p<0.01) with brand equity. Furthermore, it seems that no other variables are directly correlated with brand equity. However it is found that the likability of paintings, as well as figurative paintings are positively correlated with the knowledge about paintings (respectively; r=0.4592 p<0.01, r=0.6616 p<0.01), meaning that when the likability of paintings and figurative paintings is high a person tends to have a higher knowledge of paintings.
Group D positive comments + no website
In group D it is found that owned SMM is correlated with brand equity (r=0.6689 p<0.01). Next to this, the likability of paintings and figurative paintings are found to be positively correlated with the knowledge about paintings (respectively; r=0.5468 p<0.01, r=0.4673 p<0.01).
Group E negative comments + no website
Also in group E it is found that owned SMM is correlated with brand equity (r=0.5721 p<001). Next to this it is found that when somebody follows other art galleries on social media it is positively correlated with brand equity (r=0.4319 p<0.01). Lastly, when scored high on likability of the figurative painting shown in the post a positive correlation was found with the knowledge about paintings (r=0.4936 p<0.01).
Group F no comments + no website (without the address of the art gallery)
In this group both earned SMM and owned SMM are positively correlated with brand equity (respectively; r=0.7602 p<0.01, r=0.7528 p<0.01). Likability of figurative paintings is found to be positively correlated with the knowledge about paintings (r=0.4412 p<0.01). Lastly, it was found when following other art galleries on social media a positive correlation is found with the likability of abstract paintings (r=0.4447 p<0.01)
Concluding, in most groups owned SMM and earned SMM positively correlates with brand equity. Next to this, likability of paintings and figurative paintings should also be considered in these relations, as well as the likability of the realistic paintings shown in the post. In order to see if those correlations hold true even when conditioning on all the other variables further analyses are required. The last section of the data analysis will provide this regression analysis to see if those variables can lead to a significant effect on the dependent variable.
5.4 Hypotheses testing
Independent variables
In order to give an indication if the hypotheses are true, a pairwise t-test comparison is done. We can use a t-test for the difference in the mean since, as we saw before, we can assume that brand equity is normally distributed. Owned SMM and earned SMM are tested. In fact, I wanted to test if the distribution of brand equity differs with respect to different levels of these variables. Since these are categorical variables and since pairwise t-tests cannot be run on continuous variables, dummy variables are created. Given the fact that for both owned and earned SMM the answers range from strongly agree to strongly disagree, the observations with a high level of owned SMM (strongly agree, agree) are recorded as “1”, while “0” records observations with low levels of owned SMM (strongly disagree, disagree & neither agree nor disagree). The same steps were followed for earned SMM.
After the creation of these dummy variables one can test if the mean values for brand equity is significantly different between observations with high and low owned SMM and earned SMM. This works as a partial validation of our first hypotheses since we test if a positive owned SMM (and earned SMM) positively influence brand equity.
Table 9. T-Test Owned SMM
Group Nr. Mean Std. Error Std. Dev. 95% Conf. Interval
0 91 -.5734838 .0879553 .83904 -.3987453 -.7482224
1 114 .457781 .0796975 .8509361 .615676 .2998859
Combined 205 2.74e-09 .0689818 .9876691 -.1360087 .1360087
Difference 1.031265 .1188807 .7968655 1.265664
Diff = mean(1) - mean(0) with t = 8.6748
Ho: diff = 0 Degrees of freedom = 203
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Given the fact that for owned SMM the answers range from strongly agree to strongly disagree, the observations with a high level of owned SMM (strongly agree, agree) are recorded as “1”, while “0” records observations with low levels of owned SMM (strongly disagree, disagree & neither agree nor disagree). From the pairwise t-test on owned SMM shown in table 9 one can conclude that there is statistical evidence for a difference in the means of the two groups (high owned SMM vs low owned SMM). This means that the higher is the owned SMM (1) the higher the brand equity (statistical significance with a p-value of 0.0000). Therefore, from this analysis, hypothesis H1: “Owned SMM that is generated by the
website from the art gallery, positively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity” indicates to be true.
Table 9. T-Test Earned SMM
Group Nr. Mean Std. Error Std. Dev. 95% Conf. Interval
0 96 -.3312149 .0954847 .9355547 -.1416539 -.5207759
1 109 .2917122 .090325 .9430205 .470752 .1126725
Combined 205 -2.74e-09 .0689818 .9876691 -.1360087 .1360087
Difference .6229272 .1315045 .3636373 .8822171
Diff = mean(1) - mean(0) with t = 4.7369
Ho: diff = 0 Degrees of freedom = 203
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 1.0000 Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000 Pr(T > t) = 0.0000
From the pairwise t-test on earned SMM one can see that there is statistical evidence that the bigger is the earned SMM (group “1”) the higher is the brand equity (statistical significance with a p-value of 0.0000). From this the following hypotheses can be assumed to hold true:
H2a: Earned SMM that is generated by positive comments from visitors to an art gallery’s
Instagram page, positively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity.
H2b: Earned SMM that is generated by negative comments from visitors to an art gallery’s Instagram page, negatively influences first time visitors’ perceptions of an art gallery’s brand equity.
Although from these tests the hypotheses are shown to be true, these results are based on pairwise tests from which one cannot give a conclusive statement on the hypotheses. For this, a regression analysis needs to be done. The regression analysis is shown in Chapter 5.5.
Descriptive variables
Although the following variables cannot test if the hypotheses are true or not, it can still be useful to look at those in order to understand the data better and therefore look at the differences per research treatment. The first control variable that will be tested is gender.
Table 9. T-Test Gender
Group Nr. Mean Std. Error Std. Dev. 95% Conf. Interval
Male 103 .04197 .0965535 .9799111 -.1495434 .2334834
Female 101 -.0185913 .0969136 .9739698 -.2108652 .1736825
Combined 204 .0119862 .0682663 .9750376 -.1226157 .1465881
Difference .0605613 .1368103 -.2091982 .3303209
Diff = mean(Male) - mean(Female) with t = 0.4427 Ho: diff = 0 Degrees of freedom = 202
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Starting with the control variable gender the p-value of the double-sided test is 0.6585, which makes me conclude that there is no significant difference between males and females with respect to brand equity across all the six different groups.
Table 10. T-Test Follow other art galleries on social media
Group Nr. Mean Std. Error Std. Dev. 95% Conf. Interval
Yes 58 .5134326 .1119957 .8529335 .7377 .2891652
No 147 -.2025788 .0796655 -.965893 -.0451323 -.3600254
Combined 205 -2.74e-09 .0689818 -.9876691 -.1360087 .1360087
Difference .7160114 .1450684 1.002046 .4299773
Diff = mean(Yes) - mean(No) with t = -4.9357
Ho: diff = 0 Degrees of freedom = 203
Ha: diff < 0 Ha: diff != 0 Ha: diff > 0
Pr(T < t) = 1.0000 Pr(|T| > |t|) = 0.0000 Pr(T > t) = 0.0000
Continuing to the control variable if one follows other art galleries on social media, the p-value of the double-sided test is 0.0000. From this it is concluded, that there is a significant difference between those who follow other art galleries on social media and those who do not with respect to brand equity across all the six different groups. For those who follow other art galleries on social media the mean brand equity is statistically higher (0.51) as compared to the mean brand equity for those who do not follow other art galleries (-0.20) (with a p-value of the one sided test of 0.0000).
Table 11. T-Test Know art gallery de Twee Pauwen
Group Nr. Mean Std. Error Std. Dev. 95% Conf. Interval
Don’t know 198 -.0207894 .0702373 .9883271 -.1177242 .159303
Know 7 .5880439 .3111476 .8232191 -1.349395 .1733068
Combined 205 -2.74e-09 .0689818 .9876691 -.1360087 .1360087
Difference .6088334 .3783744 -.1372146 1.354881
Diff = mean(Don’t know) - mean(Know) with t = 1.6091 Ho: diff = 0 Degrees of freedom = 203
